Tag Archives: Logic

Whoso would be a man must also be a non conformist. –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series

THE TRUE LEADER

POSSIBLE CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Rebel: Anti-conformist.

Scholar: Non-conformist; seeker of truth.

Follower: “What should I do?”

Leader: “What if…….”, “How would……..?”, “Why was that?”

Seasoned Follower: Sounds a little bit like a True Leader. Always carries a book written by an actual True Leader.

Voice in the Crowd: Could be anybody, a True leader, A Seasoned Follower, a Non-conformist-Anybody, Anti-conformist; anybody, really.

THE STORY BEGINS:

Voice in the Crowd: Who wants to be our leader?

Seasoned Follower: I do.

Voice in the CrowdGo ahead then. You shall be our leader.

A Child in Their Midst: I think the Voice in the Crowd should be our leader.

Though coming from the lips of one so young, the idea seems to resonate throughout the crowd; the followers quickly voteamongst themselves and elect the Voice in the Crowd to be their Leader.

Voice in the Crowd: No, No; please, I don’t want that responsibility, really; I spend most of my time writing. I don’t have time to be a Leader.

The Child in Their Midst: I have an idea; you continue to spend your days writing and I’ll come over every morning and edit your written words; I’ll even create a blog, And, I could make a movie of you at work and publish the video on YouTube. I’m little; you won’t even know I’m there. And you, Mr. Voice in the Crowd, can continue your daily activities undisturbed by your followers plus…. your followers will have a new Leader.”

The Voice in the crowd appears to mull this idea over, eventually relaxing his furrowed brow, replacing the worrisome stress indicator with a big, wide smile on his lips which is in turn, greeted by a resounding salvo of energetic hurrahs and this group of followers celebrates the fact that they now had a new Leader. Of course they all think that their new leader is Mr. Voice in the Crowd but you and I know that the True Leader is the little girl, the Child in Their Midst, who saves the day.

I was at my favorite meeting yesterday morning. We are a small group of fifteen or so people who try to live a spiritual life.

We invite a guest speaker who talks about his or her spiritual discoveries at the end of which talk a topic is forthcoming.

The chairperson mentioned that with only fifteen people, there would be two groups and that the smokers would congregate outside.

Our speaker gave a fascinating talk which included tales of watching the heavens from a sleeping bag in fifty countries around the world and a word or two about having once had a job but that he preferred traveling.

It was the speaker’s responsibility to choose a topic; the topic was HONESTY.

When we broke into groups I joined the smokers for the freedom that the patio had to offer. Our speaker joined us outside, he at one end of the table, I at the other.

So…

What does one say about HONESTY? The truth of any subject is hidden from us; that is to say that the truth of everything is guarded by the future. That is why we measure everything.

The truth of speed is measured in MPH or FPS. Life experience is measured in years, months perhaps seconds. But HONESTY?

A lie is easier to understand but like HONESTY it cannot be measured. Does HONESTY even exist? Perhaps if we subjected the quality of HONESTY to the power of something else, but what? Perception perhaps? Or awareness?

Each of these words imply that perhaps there is no HONESTY, but what? Belief? If our beliefs change over time would not the person whose life is being guided by these beliefs have a change at least, in attitude?

Is attitude a synonym for HONESTY? A modifier? A quality? These were the thoughts I had and which I shared with the group. Our guest seemed puzzled by the change in what was now being said about this subject and when the metamorphous reached his end of the table, agreed that HONESTY was a difficult topic.

My father died in 1976. By that time I was pretty sure that he was a Taoist, perhaps even a Buddhist but certainly not a Baptist.

Mother called my father Lovey and so did I.

Lovey called Mother Oodles and so did I.

Lovey did not insist that I follow in his footsteps; he encouraged me to ask questions (of myself) and to seek answers.

LEE: Lovey, Oodles told me about Aristotle; who was Aristotle?

LOVEY: Look up Aristotle in The World Book, Lee.

Later…

LEE: I found a book on Aristotle at the library and I checked it out. I read the introduction and discovered that Aristotle had some very different ideas. What if Aristotle was wrong about everything, Lovey?

Should I read this book; whaddaya think?

LOVEY: Son, I think you should assume that everything in that book is wrong.

LEE: Okay Lovey, I’ll return it to the library tomorrow.

LOVEY: No, no Son, let me finish; I think you should first assume that this book is wrong and then I think you should read it. If you are going to judge a book with new information and you judge it to be good without ever having read it, then what is the sense of reading it.

By judging this book or any book with new ideas to be a bookful of mistakes, then every line in that book will mean something to you. You won’t ever again need to ask your parents, your teacher, your friends or even your enemies if a book with new ideas is good or bad or some of each.

You may even be able to write your own books.

Would you like to be an author sharing fresh ideas?

LEE: Gee, Lovey; you’re the smartest father in the whole world.

Lovey only made it through the second grade. When his father Dr Broom died, Lovey who was Horace Dixie Broom, managed the family farm until World War One.

Dixie was fourteen by then and knew as much about medicine as any of the front-line medics. His new job in the Ambulance Corps had him picking up injured soldiers and with the help of others in the trenches got his passengers into a Mule Team Covered Wagon and return them to the medical tents. He often had to patch up his passengers before bringing them aboard.

Lovey was not a blood relation, by the way.

Lovey and Oodles, my Great-Aunt Marie adopted me in 1943. I was four years old. Oodles taught me to read in 1943. These new parents of mine bought me lots of books…

True Leaders generally have only one follower, one person on their team;The Leader, The Follower, The Self Starter – they are One.LEADERSHIP Jan 1, 2016 Lee Broom.

THE LONELINESS OF SELF-LEADERSHIP

I awoke this morning in a depression.

I awaken most mornings eager to greet the day, usually with notes scribbled the night before while grinding freeze-dried coffee beans and running sparkling, crystal-clear water from the hills of the Ozarks over the crumbled, legumes, using two tall, clear-glass cylinders, originally intended for floral displays.Voila:A coffee maker of my design.

Today I had only the coffee to look forward to and the knowledge that those who work as I do in a home that is more of a writer’s laboratory than an abode, spend most of their long day alone. It was the loneliness that convinced me to shut my eyes and snooze from six A.M. until nine.

I awoke again at 9:00 A.M.

I walked to the kitchen opened the freezer door, placed my head into the cold space and inhaled deeply. The negative ions prepared me for the minutes to come.

I shut the freezer door, heated the coffee, poured a cup thereof and padded back to my desk. reminding myself of couple of truths…

(1) Scholars, inventors, scientists and authors do work which requires a knack for Leadership.

(2)True leaders lead only themselves.

I didn’t bother to dress, or to fix breakfast. What started my morning as a huge disappointment became my work for the day. With a bed – sheet ’round my shoulders and a cup of reheated Starbucks coffee I pored over the pages of a book I wrote a few years ago, entitled LEADERSHIP: A LOVE STORY.

As I searched for words to explain how I was feeling I relived those feelings of loneliness and remembered my discovery that Leadership as we think of it is not a role one chooses but rather a label that needs to be refined.

And I had done that.

I reminded myself again…

True leaders lead only themselves.

That is the way of the Scholar, the Inventor, the Scientist, the Water-colorist, the Author .

Put another way: only the agnostic may discover anything of great importance (if such truth awaits discovery).

Yet another way: perhaps we are all agnostics.

And another: The True Leader must seek truth ignoring the clamor of would-be leaders shouting in the background, the pass-along Truths of their GROUP.

I asked a friend to verify the facts of her story echoing in my ears,; “How did you acquire this information?”

“I researched it”

“What were your sources?”

The reply was sprinkled with phrases of “I heard…”, “This lady…” and “We heard” and “Everyone says”.

I succeeded somehow in keeping my sermon silent as I nodded my head, a quiet but nevertheless illogical response, in that I was offering a silent agreement to her illogical habit of acquiring information, judging the credibility of her newest belief by virtue of popularity.

Most of us are more interested in having a reputation for credibility than for actually being credible. That’s because of our dependence on the approval of whatever group we claim as ours; We seek to be loved ; we settle for approval.

We use illogical phrases such as “fair trial”, for example. Another friend uses this phrase a lot. She is a clerk in a law office. She doesn’t realize that fairness is based on bias while trials depend on facts.

“The phrase ‘Just Verdict’ might be a better choice”, I argued.

“Why is that?” she asked.

Suddenly I realized that objective thinking and accurate reporting were not linked to IQ, but to habit.

Even presidents often use rationality instead of logic, proof instead of accuracy, the opinions of The Group rather than personal research, depending on something as inane as a comb-over to hide a rapidly balding pate, the most observable clue being that its owner chooses his own thoughts over that of the group.